Something Worth Reading.

Today’s date is 30/11/2008. This week’s highest selling game across all platforms is Singstar’s ABBA.

Amazing, yet really sad.
No Mario, Need for Speed, Sims, Halo or even Pokermon. They all came close. But didn’t make the grade. Just further proof the general public have absolute fuckin tragic tastes in not just music but also video games as well. I don’t play games much these days but in all the games in the world I wouldn’t be caught dead playing, ABBA singstar would be one of them.
This guy is classic:

Windows 7 (also known as Blackcomb and Vienna) looks to be released mid next year.

The way I see it, a company like Microsoft is going to be in a tight position. It can go one of two ways: Under promise and over deliver. This is what a good project manager does. Calculates the worst case scenario, promises that they will deliver within this timeframe and anything inside of that is simply a bonus.

Where am I going with this? Well, Microsoft blow caution to the wind(ows) and does the complete opposite. From a marketing perspective this makes sense because of course you want people to purchase your product. But they over promise and under deliver. Between Windows 95 and XP; people have come to expect blue screens. It’s still one of the giant joke of the internet. Which reminds me, it’s Fact Vs Fiction time:

Fiction: Macs never crash. This has always been one of the strong selling points due to any MS-related OS was about as stable as a woman’s emotional state, francium, the American Economic state or caesium-137/DS 267 (which is metastable - which has a lifespan of 3*10^-6 seconds). That’s a little science joke for those who got it.

Fact: Suck on my nuts. MS try hard to make an OS that doesn’t make poor use of your computer resources. XP doesn’t crash much at all which is a vast improvement on 95/98/XP and to a degree 2000. Plus let’s face it, if you were really sick of Microsofts shit, you would have moved to Linux many years ago and delt with any limitation it might have (if any). Plus this:

After forking over your hard-earnt cash (or an internal organ on the black market if you are way too po’) or better yet wait 4-5 hours the day it comes out for someone to rip and anti-engineer all 4 editions and put them into a torrent for free downloading after MS spend weeks coding anti-piracy protection. But when you crack open that case and it has that awesome smell of Chinese-produced plastic and install the fresh OS and download a gig of updates which didn’t come with the software and then disable a whole bunch of pre-loaded options which no one except a computer novice would use and then change the shit theme it comes with, only to find out the computer upgrade you just purchased is still under performs compared to your previous machine with about a third of the processing power running XP (or perhaps Linux running a Windows Emulator).

Of course I am talking about Vista. But you can easily see how I can transcribe Vista into Windows 7. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice? Shame on you. Plus the images I see on the net, a whole lot hasn’t changed. Bigger icons? That equates to someone not understanding you because you speak English and their first language is Russian. So you shout in English at them. They fuckin heard you the first time, you dick. They don’t understand what you mean. Screaming isn’t going to solve anything.

MS were talking about having a service-based operating system which essentially ment you had a dumb terminal and in order to do anything you need an internet connection for MS to allow you to do anything. In Aus, that shit won’t fly. It would take far too long to do just about anything with the shit internet connections we have. Plus, I am sure they will reverse engineer that shit in the first day or two after it is release.

Plus, I love the way they market an new operating system. They use extremely positive but vague statements like, “We’re also trying to make their everyday tasks easier, like connecting and syncing devices, browsing the web, and managing a home network.” In other words, we’re going to make tasks idiot-proof. Which will be next to impossible. I think the way you do things in XP is already easy. And if people haven’t figured out how to do it by now, I think it is about time to give up. Alternatively they could do it the Mac way and make mice one button and when an error happens give a vague description of the problem and tell the user to reboot. If the error still persists, either try and fix it on your own OR contact your system administrator on 555-9232.
Or statements of genius, “We’re paying particular attention to the things they’re telling us are important to them and will make their PCs work the way they want them to—things like enhanced reliability, responsiveness, and faster boot and shut-down.”

In other words, they are going to deliver something worth while. Hey MS, it’s only been 15 years coming but we might get there. People, please don’t get me wrong. I would love to see Windows 7 perform on a machine that doesn’t require a $1500 upgrade. Or come with options which are pointless and take away useful options I use now. Or have complete incompatibility with previous…well, anything prior to the new stuff. A bad start is by running a compatibility test to ensure everything I have now is going to work on the new platform. People have been saying Vista was like Windows ME so if history is anything to go by Windows 7 should be like Windows XP. My only problem with this logic is for every 2 operating systems MS release only one is worth getting.

I think anyone who is new to the Internet (which are typically 5-6 year olds and computer illiterates who wouldn’t know how to find my computer in a pink fit) should be greated with the following videos:

It demonstrates that there is more to the internet than just porn. For those who have found my website in search of porn, I am afraid this was an entire ruse. Still…pretty funny videos.

2. If you were offered a sponsorship by ANY brand of alcohol, being an athlete has absolutely no bareing on becoming a drunk. That shit is enivitable. If I was offered sponsorship by Jim Beam where piss was free/extremely cheap, it would be premium blacks all day, all night - all the time. It’s not a racist thing. I’d wake up at 6 in the morning for a slash and a bourbon-pick-me-up. Although that depends on what time I passed out during the bender I had. If I was a 400m relay sprinter, not only would I mistake the baton for a bourbon roadie but there better be a bourbon waiting for me at the end of my 400m. Ya know, give me reason to run. I think it would be a good look running down that track with a durry hangin out the side of your mouth and a bourbon in the hand. You might as well run in tracky dacks.

3. Let’s face it - because you’re an athlete you are probably going to drink more. Or do more hard drugs. The shit you have to go through to become the best you can be in a highly competitive industry is way too intense for any human. So, why not let yourself slide for a little while and take a load of by being slumped in your chair with a beer or 12?

4. Hell, it doesn’t have to be alcohol. They stopped the smoking sponsorship for obvious reasons. Trying to run 15km being promoted by a company that sells a product which would restrict you from doing such activity like running 15kms seems even a little off-kilter even for me. So, why not crack? Or LSD?
Running 15kms on LSD would the funniest thing on TV but also the most entertaining. He is running along and flapping his arms like he can somehow flap hard enough to fly and perhaps screaming something like, “I AM THE GIANT BIRD MAN! ALL HAIL BIRDMAN!”.

5. They talk about alcohol culture like it’s a refined thing. It’s not a fine wine. It’s a bunch of sloppy athelete’s who get all handsy on anything female. And being New Zealanders, this includes sheep.

Metallica are a great band. Their heavy rock/thrash undoubtably influenced a whole generation. Kids today still listen to the band like they still have importance which is clearly misguided and a giant misnomer if ever there was one.

I went to a bucks party recently for a friend of mine - Robbo. Robbo generally has good taste in music and has been part of the reason of opening my eyes to a lot of old music which might have missed the mainstream but either was historically important or wrote albums just as good as their mainstream counterparts. Apparently there was more bands out there than just Led Zepplin, Dylan, Neil Young and the Rolling Stones. Yeah, I was surprised too.

Anyway, there was a group of crackers who turned up that didn’t know Rob from a bar of soap. The music that was played during the night was made to appeal to every one and not the obscure tastes of Rob and myself. But during the night this group wanted to put on some music. Well, they wanted to put on Metallica. Nothing else. Just Metallica. 12 tracks of Metallica. At a party. Just the one band. That’s it. The one band.
I thought it was a little rich and since everyone else had either passed out or fucked off, Rob and I gave in and we negotiated down to about 8 excruciatingly long songs as they were having a whinge about the choice of music being played. It was 8 songs too many if you ask me. They were all from the new one and I had the pleasure of listening to all 3 Unforgivens in numerical order. I\’m sorry if people don\’t play Metallica at every social occasion but there is a time and place to play Metallica. Like at a Metallica concert anywhere between 86 to 92 at a time when they released something worth listening to. I strain to think of anywhere else publicly that a band so overrated should be played. Another place acceptable to be played is at home with earphones on and turned down.

I don\’t want anyone here being completely misled by what I am saying. Metallica did write some great music - “Four Horsemen”, “Motorbreath”, “Blackened” and, “The Wait” (being a cover, mind you)…all great tracks. I had a whole 6 months where I was into Metallica. I am denying of that…back in the 80s and early 90s. And since then people are yammering on about them like they are the greatest thing since electricity.

I don\’t believe in God and religion in general but if there was such a thing called hell, it would be couped up in a dark room with one spearker in a top corner where I couldn’t possibly put it out from the socket it was contained in listening to nothing but Linkin Park and Metallica on loops with drabs of other modern pop shit.

Talking about shit, it brings me to the review of the new Metallica album, “Death Magnetic”. I would be impressed with Metallica if Metallica were the only band in existance. The only reason people are saying this is such a great album is if you compare it to something like the God-aweful and complete ho-hum affair “St Anger”, “Death Magnetic” looks really good. If this album was created by any other band that was not Metallica, it would have been treated like an Australian idol singer after their 15 minutes of fame of singing covers.
So, I have gone out of my way to give this album 5 shits:

If you want to talk about how great this album is, you could either leave a comment on my site or go to this go and join the Metallica fan club where you can talk with other Metallica lovers, spoon and toss each others salads: http://jonsquared.wo … ant-metallica-rocks/. This website has absolutely no affiliation with me. I just found it in google amoungst the millions of websites devoted to an incredibly over-hyped band.

Anyway, to lighten the mood I have tracked down old videos I loved circa 1999/2000:

Well, I did say I would get what people think about mp3 of the week. So far I have one count for, “Unforgiven III”. So that equals…well, one count for, “Unforgiven III”. So in defiance of this abysmal count of people I have told to make a comment and the person who actually bothered, I am going through with this but I am choosing the song.

The song I chose this week is, “Froggy’s Lament” by Buckner and Garica. The story goes these two guys wrote ad jingles for a radio station, came home early one day from work and wrote this song in a hope they could exploit the then-rising trend of video games. They wrote one hit and an album to accompany the hit both by the same title - “Pac-man Fever”.
I’d include the single but this song is better although I guess that really depends on what qualifies as better. The song wasn’t a hit single initially. The guys sent the single to 20 different labels which were turned down and they released it by themselves. Eventually CBS took their single on board and apparently, made millions from this one single - it was huge.

I logged in this evening checking out my emails like I think I am someone special who gets emails written by people and not spam offering to make my penis an unbelievable 20% bigger or a free degree. The email reads something like the following:
“Do you like subway? So do women. Wanna know why? Because they like a whole foot. Not 6 inches. So click on this link: http://oiue.ewrg.com/32409n0394dsfb807dfb5df and sign up to have your penis ridiculously big for only $80! Your penis will be so big, only loose women will be able to tackle your tackle. Your penis will be so big, no reasonable woman would want your penis and any videos taken of it will end up on youtube! We guarantee* a bigger penis.

*guarantee may not be valid in certain circumstances.”

I figure if you’re too stupid to realize you just signed up for something fictional like a free degree or by paying $20 for a good album by any “artist” on Australian/American Idol (a purchase you later regret), you’re gunna experience a few problems trying to complete any course.

I’m sure I had a point to this entry but this was written over two days.
Fucked if I can remember where I was going with this.

It’s been weeks since I have had this website and still no one cares.
Thanks Pat for caring.

Anyway, I have been trawling through myspace recently. The only thing that came out of the 20 minutes waste of time is the most popular genre on myspace is Hip Hop. Goes to show any moron who downloads Fruity loops can make an unimpressionable hip hop album and be just like the other 2.5 million “bands”.

Every now and again you find the odd band that is DIY, don’t give a shit what any one else thinks and are alright in their own merits:
http://www.myspace.com/ninetyninereasonswhy
http://www.myspace.com/gilgameshstillsuck

And the award for the most overrated band on myspace goes to…KINGS OF LEON!

Their music is alright. Not great. The only reason they get so much attention is due to the fact that when you compare it to the slop that is the mainstream, these guys sound like the best band, ever. Comparing this band to mainstream pop is like comparing the movie The Godfather to Soul Plane, Catwoman or Howard the Duck.